Gripla - 20.12.2016, Page 84

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an approach that gives equal weight to both material contexts in which
the Íslendingasögur were transmitted – parchment/paper and landscape
– can draw out the nature of the active, experiential dynamics that char-
acterised transmission beyond the evolution of saga texts from one manu-
script to another, and with reference to the provenance of manuscripts.
Just as “the landscape is never inert, people engage with it, re-work it,
appropriate it, and contest it”,92 so are narratives equally dynamic, rewrit-
ten and retold by every generation. When attention is directed only at the
material preservation of the sagas in parchment and paper copy, only half
the story of the sagas’ transmission is told. Despite the complexity of the
relationship between the sagas and the landscapes in which they are set,
the two cannot be divorced, and the ways in which the textual or literary
meaning(s) of the Íslendingasögur have been constructed and shaped by the
material contexts in which they have been transmitted over a period of
nearly 1000 years can only come in to focus when landscape and manu-
script as media are considered in tandem.93
B I B L I O G R A P H Y
M A N U S C R I P T S
Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, Reykjavík
aM 162 a θ fol.
AM 162 d II fol.
British Library, London
BL Add. 4868
Universitets biblioteket, Lund
Cod. Lund. Mh 20
92 Barbara Bender, ed., Landscape: Politics and Perspectives (oxford: Berg, 1993), 3.
93 Grateful acknowledgement is made of the financial and practical support received from
Miðaldastofa, Háskóli Íslands, rannÍS (rannsóknasjóður grant awarded for ‘tími,
rými, frásögn og Íslendingasögur’ project 2014–2016) and Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í
íslenskum fræðum, reykjavík, while this research was being conducted and written up.
the author would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback, and
Christopher Callow for commenting on a draft.